Question About Sand As A Substrate...

[w435pbf]

Hi everyone,

I have a quick question about sand, have looke everywhere and found so many conflicting opinions I thought I would ask on here since you all seem to know so much!

Is it a good or bad idea to churn up my sand periodically? I am finding it hard to siphon off all of the cr*p that sits on top and so consequently it is making the sand look horrible. It also has some patches of dark in it which I presume is decomposing waste / food. (the sand in the protected areas i.e in cave, is still new looking). Would it be a good idea to churn up the sand and dislodge some of this buried waste or will that make it worse?! Am at a bit of a loose end so any advice would be appreciated! Am relatively new to sand so apologies if this is a stupid question!

Cheers.

 

[drobbyb]

Welcome to TFF! I had sand for a breif period and I found myself having to shift the sand quite a bit. It's best to siphon off the surface as much as you can. I am sure someone with more experience with it will come along soon.

 

[susankat]

Yes it is a good idea to keep the sand stirred somewhat. What I do is just take a fork or a chopstick once a week and poke into the sand in all places where there is no plants. Doing this will bring up most of the decomposing waste so that it could be siphoned up. Also as you are vac. kind of wave your hand about the substrate slowly and it will bring up the detrius to where it is easier to get.

 

[Ficious]

There's two ways of looking at it. You can churn the sand up when cleaning the sand or you can leave it to compact. I find that compacted sand never turns over by itself and poo can't go beneath the surface. Its up to you. It usualy takes a while for the sand to compact. Depending on what kind of tank you have, corydoras or any kind of grazing bottom dweller will keep the top layer of sand stirred up by digging for food. Hope we've helped...good luck!

 

[DEEDEEK]

I use a turkey baster, with a little Microbe-Lift Special Blend. I suck up some tank water and then stick the baster in areas of open sand and slowly slowly squeeze so it infuses the lower layers of sand with a little oxygenated water plus Special Blend claims to have denitrafiing bacterias.

When I've done this to black sand next to the glass, I can observe it turn pale again over a few days. Also, I have low nitrates. I skipped water changes a couple weeks running and my nitrates actually were a little lower by the end of the experiment!

My tank is very lightly planted and has little algae to account for this. Since this was a completely unscientific experiment I can only guess that either the oxygenated water added just enough of a trace of O2 to discourage anoxic bacteria and encourage some anaerobic bacteria, which I hear need a tiny amount of oxygen to dominate over the anoxic bugs and to denitrafy. Maybe the Special Blend introduced the right sort of heterophiles to the deep sand. Or maybe I'm just nuts. I was just foolin' around, not expecting to get any results at all.

Anyone else experience freshwater denitrafication in sand?

Oh, the sand I use is a quartzy, smooth, large grained (.5-2mm) type and it doesn't pack down very tightly.

My opinion: the type of sand I use, bought on the owner of LFS' recommendation, is great. He uses 3-4 inches of the stuff in all his tanks, which are heavily planted and claims never to have had a problem with them. Besides, I can dump a big clump of california blackworms in it and they burrow down and my fish catch 'em any time they stick their heads out! They love hunting for vulnerable worms. Sand is great!